


Never Again

by slasher48



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Well...Not Everybody), Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Buzzed Driving, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Emetophobia, Everybody Lives, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7858381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slasher48/pseuds/slasher48
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's twenty-fifth birthday party is missing an important component of What Makes Dean Winchester Happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Again

**Author's Note:**

> (Honestly, this is only really Dean/Cas if you squint, it's that unresolved, but eh.)

It’s been an hour.

And yeah, that’s not that long, but this is _Cas_ , and Cas would have been here by now. He didn’t call, and yeah, he’s not much for phones (or parties, really), but.

God, it’s been an _hour_. Sam keeps looking at him like he might suddenly explode or something. It’s irritating, and even more so how nobody else is even fucking noticing the hugely obvious absence here.

Because this is Dean’s twenty-fifth birthday and Cas has been his best friend since they were toddlers and it’s been an _hour_ and he’s not here. How is it not obvious to everyone?

He pops open his second beer and takes a drink and sighs heavily, rubbing his hand through his newly cut hair (a present from Dad for reasons he doesn’t really want to talk about) and staring into the can. It’s stupid to be this worried this soon right? Cas could totally still be here.

Jo comes over and slides onto the arm of his chair and he tries not to be annoyed by anybody being near him when he’s this upset. She helps him by ruffling his hair and saying, “Hey, happy birthday, Deano.” Leaning on her side he closes his eyes and sighs again.

“What’s up?” she says, quiet, just for them, concerned. He shakes his head, eyes still squeezed shut.

Mutters, “Cas isn’t here,” against his will and her hand tightens in his hair. He glances up at her and she looks pretty unfazed, though. What is going on with that? Don’t people _get_ what a big deal Cas is?

“So? He’s kind of a flake, isn’t he? You complain all the time about how he misses game nights to visit the community garden or stay in the library and _study_ , are you really _that_ surprised that he’s elsewhere?”

Dean lets out a frustrated breath through his nose because yeah. Yeah, she’s probably right, that’s really logical. Cas isn’t _callous_ , he’s just so preoccupied with things. He probably got held up doing the first English paper due since they got back from break. Research stresses him out, and he always loses time.

Their apartment is about a half hour away from Sam’s place, where the party is. He could probably drive that and be back in time for pie. Picking Jo up gently, he sets her on her feet and stands up out of the chair, leaving his beer, because now that he’s got a plan he’s frigging out of here. He doesn’t let Ellen accost him either, heading over to Sam to give him a heads up before he goes.

Sam’s in the kitchen, making punch, apparently, Jess sitting on the counter nearby and laughing, at some weird smart guy humor, probably, that’s what they’re always doing. He turns around and Dean freezes, because is this rude? It’s probably rude. But it’s _Cas_. Torn, he’s standing there, not really sure what to do, when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He slides it out and into his hand, puts up a finger and turns around, “Yeah?”

And he can almost _smell_ the antiseptic, when he hears, “This is Nurse Madsen, I’m trying to get hold of a Dean Winchester?” His heart falls to his feet.

“You, uh…” He breathes out heavily, “You got him. This is Dean.”

“We have a Castiel Milton here. He listed you as his next of kin.” And it’s like someone kicked his knees out from under him. Dean sways, slapping a hand on the wallpaper to keep himself from toppling, nodding like a fucking fool.

“Yeah, okay, uh, yeah. We did that, right, I forgot about that. What—” _Cas_. Oh god. “What’s. How is he?”

Her voice saddens, and he feels like he might throw up. On his fucking _birthday_ , he might vomit because something _happened to his best friend_. “He’s not doing that well, Mr. Winchester. They brought him in barely breathing, and he’s gone into cardiac arrest three times. You might…” She sounds nice, really, but that doesn’t make him want to punch things any less, “You might want to get over here, because if he wakes, that.” What right does she have to sound so upset? _She didn’t even know him_. How wonderful Cas was. Is. _Is_.

“That might be your last chance,” she finally says, sounding forcibly detached, and Dean swallows down a streak of swear words that might get him barred from the place before he even gets there, already running toward the back door, ignoring Sam’s shouts behind him. He thanks the nurse quickly and stuffs his phone back in his pocket and makes it all the way to Baby before he has to stop and bend over his knees, gasping for air and feeling like someone’s torn the ground out from under him.

 _Happy birthday Dean_. God, those might be the last words Cas ever says to him. How is he supposed to fucking drive when trying not to cry feels like something clawing his fucking face. Wait, no, he _i_ s _,_ he’s clawing his face, and there’s Sam, Sam at his shoulder, Sam being a way too fucking tall lean-to, Sam supporting him.

Tears are already running down his face, and he’s gasping, “Sammy, it’s Cas,” over and over again, and Sam wraps around him but he doesn’t have the time to get any comfort from it. He throws the door open and hurls himself into the Impala and breathes for just a second before he rips the keys out and jams them into the ignition. He’ll apologize to his Baby, but he just. He needs to _go_ , Cas has so much shit he needs to hear before— before—

Shaking his head, he pulls out of the driveway and wipes at his face and speeds too far. First fucking cop who stops him will get a fist to the face, he swears. The hospital’s still a half hour away, he’s never going to make it. Ten minutes away from Sam’s, he starts hyperventilating thinking that and slaps himself in the face, because he _has to_. His phone is buzzing, but it’s illegal to drive and talk, and he’s already pushing it; he takes it out of the pocket and throws it onto the passenger seat.

Glares at the passenger seat because _that’s where Cas belongs_ , not in a fucking hospital on the edge of—

By the time he makes it, his face is dried tears and tacky facial hair, and he swallows just looking at the place that might serve for Cas’s last moments. Tearing himself out of the car, leaving his phone, he stalks in, trying to calm himself. Yelling at someone’s not gonna get him to Cas any faster.

“Castiel Milton?” he asks, and god, he probably should have called Anna, right? Anna his ex, Anna the only family member Cas still speaks to. Fuck. _Fuck_. This situation couldn’t get any worse.

And then he hates himself.

Because the nurse asks, “Mr. Winchester?” with grimness in her voice and he nods and her eyes drop and he knows what that means, can barely stop himself making some kind of protesting noise, yelling “No” like he’s that melodramatic asshole they always show in _Dr. Sexy_. He remembers it, it’s in his fucking _dreams_ , the way the fireman who put out their house stared at Dean’s bare feet as he quietly broke Dean’s world into pieces with the words, “I’m sorry, kid.”

“I’m sorry. He only made it ten minutes after I called you. We did everything we could, sir, but he was in critical condition, and—sir?” Dean’s fists slam on the reception desk and he turns away, raking a hand through his hair and for once not even noticing anybody staring at his outburst when he lets out a sob.

 _Cas_. God, how could it be Cas? On his birthday. On his _birthday_. Karma, right, some sort of universal scale-balancing, cos Mom died six months after Sam’s. Dean didn’t deserve to be happier than Sam on that day.

He’s crying, Jesus he’s _crying_ , and Dad would be so disappointed because so many people can see, but how. How is he meant to stop when _Cas_ — he gags, swallowing, and runs to the bathroom, but it won’t come up then. Of course not. Not like it would make a difference anyway.

His back hits the wall and he slides down and it reverberates through his skull like he screamed it at the tile.

_Cas is dead. Cas is dead. Cas is dead._

The headache that will never go away. Coal on his birthday instead of Christmas because when has Dean ever been a good boy, he needs twice as much. Cas’s face in his brain, with an absentminded, fond smile as he ran out the door with his tie backwards, for his early Friday art class, stopping when Dean asked for a birthday spanking in the doorway and calling “Happy birthday, Dean,” with that _smile_ and an awkward wave before he left. That was at least ten hours ago. He should be back by now. He should be _here_.

The thought is absurd, Dean is absurd, this whole fucking _situation_ is absurd. How can Cas be dead? A scream bursts out of him, not of despair, but of _rage_. Twenty-seven year old Castiel Charles Milton, who kicked his way out of a religious asshole family because he was tired of hurting people and calling it _Christian_ , who was going to school to study _people_ because it was one of those things he just couldn’t pick up without practice, whose eyes lit up at the sight of a mug of coffee or a goddamn documentary about _bees_. Cas, his best friend _Cas_ , who pulled him out of bars when he was too far gone, who argued with him for a decade over whether Han was right for Leia, who curled around him like a blanket whenever he wordlessly stomped through the apartment into his bedroom, and whispered, “You’re allowed this, Dean.” How? _How_?

Even _Dean_ doesn’t deserve this. And _Cas_ is on the list of least deserving people in the world.

Eventually, Dean sits up. He washes his face, shaking and swallowing, and avoids looking in the mirror until he can push his way out of the bathroom and get away from it. It feels like someone tore something out of him and it’s flapping in the wind blowing between his ribs, painfully raw and missing from his system. He doesn’t know what to do but go home, but how can he ever go back to a place when all the home there was a _person_?

He sits in Baby, having waved a hand harshly at the nurse when she tried to catch him to get him to sign paperwork, and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. His phone is still buzzing, but god, for once in his life, he _needs_ a moment to himself, no matter what anybody else wants.

He drives to the park where they first met, two and four years old, before his mom died, back when he was allowed to go play whenever he wanted. There’s nowhere else to go, and even here is practically sagging with the memories, a bright curtain falling to reveal the ugly truth of reality. Sitting on the bench across from the swings where he got hit in the face and Cas picked him up and shushed him and brought him to his mother, Dean cries, he cries for everything, for him, for Cas, for a friendship like theirs brought to dust by—fuck, he doesn’t even know what killed Cas. If it was a drunk or something, they’re fucking _dead_.

But who even knows. All he knows is _Cas_ is dead.

Dean turned twenty-five and Cas died.

He bends over his knees and heaves but nothing comes up. Clenches his shaking hands together.

 _Happy birthday Dean_. Cas’s deep, calm, kind voice with an amused lilt, in his head, the worst dramatic irony.

But never again.

Never again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because of [this](http://selfihateyouithink.tumblr.com/post/110074074379/dean-things-that-make-him-smile-source%20). If you set up a room full of things that make Dean happy, he will _always_ notice the absence of Cas. Your subtle hatred will never change that Dean considers him absolutely _essential_.
> 
> (Also, disclaimer: I know almost nothing about hospital procedure. I winged it entirely.)


End file.
